Month: June 2016

How would you feel if you lost your job today? Turns out, more than half of American employees believe they’d land on their feet within six months.

Fifty-four percent of employed workers said they were confident that if they became suddenly unemployed, they’d find a new position that matched their experience and current compensation within half a year, according to the career site Glassdoor.

That optimism has been on the rise. Seven years ago, only 33% of employed workers felt that way. But confidence has been growing steadily since 2013.

However, hope among unemployed workers has recently slipped. Forty-seven percent of unemployed workers believed they would be rehired in the beginning of 2015, but that number has dropped to 40%. That’s still a high from 2014, when confidence plummeted to 31%.

Younger employees are more optimistic in their ability to find a new job than older workers, Glassdoor found. Sixty percent of people between the ages of 18 and 34 were optimistic that they would find work, while 44% of employees between the ages of 55 and 64 felt the same way.

Employee optimism can also be measured in expected salary increases. Half of employees anticipated a cost-of-living increase or pay raise within the next 12 months, according to Glassdoor.

While employee expectations have been increasing slowly since 2014, figures haven’t been that high in over seven years. In the wake of the financial crisis and subsequent recession, half of employees said they weren’t expecting a salary bump.

Whether you’re unemployed, or looking for a change, leaving one job can mean opening the door to another. Here are four things you need to know to land your dream job:

1) Find something you enjoy: To quote WPP PLC CEO Martin Sorrell, “If you enjoy your work, then it is not work.” One of the first steps in a job search should be honestly gauging what you find attractive in a role. Are you naturally social and enjoy engaging with colleagues? Does coding thrill you? Most importantly, are you up-to-date on the technical skills you need to capitalize on your interests and skills?

3) Prove you’ll go beyond what is asked of you: In an interview, demonstrate to your potential employer examples of when you took decisive action and there was a positive outcome. Showing an ability to plan in advance instead of just being reactive will set you apart from other candidates.

You’ve been job searching for ages—whether for your first job or your fifteenth. But nothing seems to be coming together for you. It’s always possible there might be something you are doing to hold yourself back. If in doubt, check yourself for these 7 common job search mistakes.

3. You blast out applications but don’t network

You’re blasting out applications by the dozens. You’ve probably applied to over 100 jobs this month, maybe 200. But you’re not getting any interviews. If you’re blasting out this kind of quantity, you’re probably focusing on online job postings, which is a mistake. You need to be doing the hard work of networking and building up your profiles on social media. You need to be doing more homework. And getting more face time in your industry. So scale back the blitzes, and make your job search smaller but much more targeted. The difference will be clear.

5. You wallow in your weak spots

Cut yourself a little slack. You’re never going to be perfect. No one is. Stop fixating on what is wrong with you and start playing up your strengths. There has to be something you are good at. Go with that and have confidence in your abilities.

Having a killer resume is great. But how do you go about getting it into a prospective employer’s hands? You must start a guerrilla job search and get tactical about finding your next job with these five secret weapons that will set you apart from other job seekers.

3. Set up Google alerts.

Create alerts with keywords of interest for prospective employers, including information about their competition and other business news. Set aside time every day to read through the alerts you receive via email. When appropriate, send links to hiring managers and people in your network with a note to say that you came across this in your reading today and thought they might be interested. Just be sure to send information that your recipients will value and don’t inundate anyone with too many emails. You’ll also want to share links to interesting articles with your online network on LinkedIn and other social media accounts.

Why this works: Becoming a curator of useful content sets you up as someone who’s interested and in the know about current events in your field.

4. Keep your search organized with a tracking system.

How will you remember what version of your resume you sent, to whom, and when? Or when was your last contact with a hiring manager? Set up an activity log to keep track of important dates, names and titles of contacts within an organization, how you heard about the company/job opening, notes about the company, and notes about your interview. Your system can be as simple as a folder for each company with all related documents or an electronic folder system. Save to Dropbox or Google Drive so you can access it anytime, anywhere.

Why this works: Organizing your guerrilla job search details will help keep important information at your fingertips for easy access, planning, and follow-up.

Social media provides more than a window of entertainment and breaking news — it can open up doors into the world of job recruitment and career experts. Twitter is a popular platform where experts of all kinds take 140 characters to publish information and advice on all things job search. Even better? You can get some insight into everything from how to up your game on social media to job openings.

Below, we highlight some of our favorite follows (which was difficult to narrow down!). From tweeting the best articles in industry news to tips on job openings, we’ve got you covered in all sorts of industries:

How much time do you think a recruiter takes to go through a resume? A few minutes maybe? Is this what you thought?

Well, the truth, according to a study by TheLadders, is that recruiters spend an average of six seconds reviewing an individual’s resume.

Sounds insane, right?

So, now the real question is how to get your resume noticed so that it can last more than those 6 seconds.

In this guest post, Tressie Williams, a corporate professional with a passion for corporate recruiting, outlines 6 top tips to make your resume stand out quickly…

2. Are You Sending The Same Resume Everywhere?

The most common mistake almost everyone does is, send the same resume to every organization that they apply for.

The key to get your resume noticed and to get the job is to optimize it according to the profile of the company you are applying for. Be creative in this part because recruiters are not an expert in the field for which they recruit. They are just normal people looking for certain specific keywords on the resume to see if the person is capable of the job or not.

So never forget to add those keywords in your resume, else it will be trashed by a computer before it even reaches a human being.

In addition, avoid grammatical & spelling mistakes at all cost. They are absolutely inexcusable in the 21st century.

5. Your Achievements Speaks For You

If you are still stuck with those high school achievements on your resume, then better use that space to get your resume noticed for the real achievements you have achieved over the years.

That light hearted information will eventually come up in the face to face interview. So, use this part of the resume to enable the potential employer to understand the kind of performer you were in the previous positions you have held.

Research has shown that your past performance predicts your future performance. So, never forget to add the challenges you faced, the actions you took to correct the problems and what the results were.

Searching for a job? It’s never an easy process, but it is something that everyone has to do. If you want to survive the job search, there are a few things every job seeker needs to know and do.

Every job search is slightly different. A job candidate seeking a job on Wall Street will need different strategies than a job seeker looking to work a season as a dive instructor on a tropical island. But no matter what type of job you are searching for, there are a lot of things that will apply to every job seeker.

Here is a collection of tips and tidbits of wise wisdom that pertain to the job search. These are the things that every job seeker needs to know and do. Read these tips and remember them. Apply them to your job search today: